The present invention relates generally to micronutrient supplements for food or animal feeds that enhance the survivability, growth, health and/or reproductivity of humans and other animals. More specifically, this invention is directed to a significant improvement of micronutrient supplements that include a basic salt of at least one essential metal, which provide high bioavailability of the essential metal to humans and other animals, and to a method of producing the micronutrient supplements over a range of particle sizes that enhance incorporating the micronutrient supplements into various foods, food mixtures and supplements.
Micronutrients include vitamins and some elements usually in the form of minerals or metal salts; most notably the elements include calcium, phosphorus, potassium, iron, zinc, copper, magnesium, manganese and iodine. Micronutrients are generally consumed in small amounts, i.e., less than 1 gm/day, usually absorbed unchanged, and many essential elements have catalytic functions. While the micronutrients are often present in minute amounts, their bioavailability is essential for survival, growth, health and reproduction. Micronutrients are important for children and other young animals, particularly during their early development years when they are rapidly growing. Furthermore, many new animal breeds require additional amounts of micronutrients as their abilities to grow at a faster rate while consuming less feed has improved. This intensive growth imposes greater metabolic stresses, causing increased susceptibility to vitamin deficiencies. It is well recognized that the needed micronutrients are often not found or not found in sufficient quantities in their food or feed sources, whether these sources are naturally occurring or commercially prepared. Consequently, virtually all industrial food and feed formulations are fortified with vitamins and minerals. The cost to commercial livestock producers for supplying micronutrients to their livestock herds can be staggering.
While human and animals' needs for additional nutrients have been well documented, the availability of the micronutrients has not always met their needs. It is not sufficient to simply increase amounts of the micronutrients in the food or feed sources. This method is ineffective, wasteful and unsafe. Many of the micronutrients are not readily absorbed; the added amounts of vitamins and minerals are simply excreted without being absorbed. Excess loading of vitamins and minerals is unsafe, and in certain circumstances, excess loading can be toxic, causing severe acute and chronic harm and can even be fatal. Thus, there is a need to provide an inexpensive, readily absorbed micronutrient to decrease costs, reduce waste and to help establish a more precise control of the nutritional requirement for humans and animals.
There is a need to provide a micronutrient supplement that is readily bioavailable, storage stable and compatible with a wide variety of different vitamins. The micronutrient supplement must also be cost-efficient to produce and provide a food source for humans and animals that will increase their survivability, growth, health and/or reproductivity.
Micronutrients are commonly produced and available in the form of salts, oxides and chelates. Oxides are relatively inexpensive; however, they are not as effectively absorbed as salts and chelated forms of micronutrients.
Chelated micronutrients are relatively expensive; however, they are more easily absorbed and have good bioavailability.
Examples of various micronutrients can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,021,569, 3,941,818, 5,583,243 all to Abdel-Monem, U.S. Pat. No. 4,103,003 to Ashmead, U.S. Pat. No. 4,546,195 to Helbig et al., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,900,561, 4,948594 both to Abdel-Monem et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,061,815 to Leu, U.S. Pat. No. 5,278,329 to Anderson, U.S. Pat. No. 5,698,724 to Anderson et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,114,379 to Wheelwright et al. U.S. Pat. No. 7,523,563 to Hopf and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0222219 to Lohmann et al.
One of the present inventors is a co-inventor of U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,534,043, 5,451,414 and 6,265,438. These patents disclose micronutrients that are basic metal salt of the formula M(OH)yX(2-y)/i, and its hydrate forms, where M is metal cation, X is an anion or anionic complex, and i is 1-3 depending on the valency of X.
The micronutrients disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,534,043, 5,451,414 and 6,265,438 were originally developed from a process that used spend etchant solutions as a source of the metal cations and a crystallization process to produce a basic metal salt having a particle size of about 30 to 300 microns.
The present invention provides for micronutrients in the form of basic metal salts that have more versatility than similar micronutrients and which have a high degree of bioavailability.